He got all his delivery's finished today, and will be staying in a hotel tonight. Planing on heading home tomorrow and working out where he is going to have the bus towed to. His friend has a place with a slab and a fork lift that would be great for removing the engine, have to see how things work out.

When he pulled up the the pumps the engine was running poorly, then he saw a cloud of smoke pass him, he checked the oil pressure gauge saw there was none and shut her down. Went out to look at the engine and saw a little smoke coming out around the engines front pulley area. If he has to rebuild he is considering an upgrade, maybe adding a turbo, or a 92, but would like to stay away from any computer controlled stuff.

Well maintained is the key with the alarm systems on a mechanical engine. How many busnuts just bypass the systems when they start to fail instead of fixing them? I read about guys bypassing them all the time. Some busnuts feel they can watch the gauges close enough to shut the engine off before it is damaged.

An electronic engine makes it hard to bypass safety features since the engine won't run.

I'm not trying to start a debate on electrical vs mechanical engine controls, both have some very good pro's and of course their cons, but from a young mans point of view, with a limited budget, staying with a mechanical engine would be more cost effective, but I could be wrong.

I am thinking the broke oil pick up tube sounds like the most logical point of failure, with my limited knowledge of diesel engines. An emergency shut down system would have been a God send. Even a simple big red low oil pressure light like the drag racers use would have been nice. An added benefit of a loud buzzer would help the driver to "notice" the red light if he, or she was kind of zoning out at the moment it went off. But if the oil pick up tube did indeed break or fall off, how many seconds would a driver have to pull over and shut the engine down before catastrophic failure?

We were disposing of some old 6v71 buses at work on day , draining the fluids etc. We decided to see how long one would last at wide open throttle with no oil or coolant. We wired the govenor wide open fired it up and everyone scattered. that puppy ran for 4min before it slowly came to a screeching halt. surprised the heck out of us. pulled the pan off there was no damage to the bearings . The pistons however didn't look quite as good. Lol

I had 8v71 in tanks will run on the average of 8 mins without oil fwiw

Once, I was driving a Range Rover with a test diesel engine (before the BMW takeover and move to BMW diesel engines). They had welded a special sample and thermocouple fitting into the drain plug -- it fell out and dumped the engine oil. Red light on the dash flashed and the horn blew -- I was in the slow lane ("right lane" on the Motorway in England) so I jammed the clutch, switched off the engine and pulled over on the shoulder - but I heard the engine STOP! (not "bubba-bubba-bub" stop, but I mean STOP right now!) The pistons and bearings were locked tighter than Garhawk's wallet -- they had to disassemble that engine with a press! So, it goes to show ya ...